


Sensory Exploration

by Isagel



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: F/M, Fate, Mechaphilia, Robot Sex, Robots, Technological Kink, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-27
Updated: 2011-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:24:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isagel/pseuds/Isagel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She reboots tabula rasa, memories wiped clean, opening her eyes to see him leaning over her, watching her face. His fingers are still pressed against her skull where the chip has just been re-inserted.</p><p>She does not remember the date which John - much younger then, in her future - will refer to as her “built day”, but when she considers it, she thinks that this might be the moment of her birth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sensory Exploration

The first visual record on Cameron’s memory card shows the human called John Connor. Later self-diagnostics indicate that other entries were made prior to this one, but she cannot tell how many, nor what information they contained before they were erased.

She reboots tabula rasa, memories wiped clean, opening her eyes to see him leaning over her, watching her face. His fingers are still pressed against her skull where the chip has just been re-inserted.

She does not remember the date which John - much younger then, in her future - will refer to as her “built day”, but when she considers it, she thinks that this might be the moment of her birth.

When she sits up, scanning the room for threats, he lays his other hand on her arm. With 92% probability, the gesture is meant to be calming.

She has no comparative data for analysing the slow, circular strokes of his thumb across the exposed metal beneath her opened scalp.

  


* * *

  


The growth rate of Cameron’s organic tissue is seriously incredible, and a week after the car bomb, most of what was charred or ripped off by the explosion has been replaced by new skin, just as smooth and flawless as the old. She seems unconcerned by the healing process, walking the house as restless as before, not allowed outside until she can pass for human again.

Derek glares at her whenever they’re in a room together, as if the metal gleam of her exposed endoskeleton wets his hostility, sharpens the knife-blade of his resolve never to trust. John’s mom acts as if she doesn’t see the difference, and perhaps to her there isn’t a difference to see; Cameron is still the piece of advanced weaponry she‘s always been.

John, for his part, tries not to stare.

Right now, it’s a losing battle.

Cameron is sitting at the kitchen table, head bent over the math homework he’s brought back for her. Her hair has fallen forward over her left shoulder, and from where he’s standing, leaning up against the sink, he can see the back of her neck, the arch of her coltan spine beneath the torn skin on the right side of her throat. He can’t make himself look anywhere else.

“So which problems am I supposed to solve?” Cameron says. She doesn’t look up, but she turns her head a fraction more in his direction, and the dark metal inside her catches the light from the window as her vertebrae shift with the motion.

John takes a step forward, two, until he’s standing by her chair. He sets his glass of orange juice down on the table, leans over her to flip the pages of the book. His other hand comes to rest against the back of the chair, almost, almost touching her.

“Here,” he says, smoothing out the page. “Chapter eight.”

“Cool,” Cameron says. “Thank you for explaining.”

She reaches for her pencil, and her sleeve catches against the table-top, riding up to reveal another patch of missing skin. John’s hand is right there, next to hers, and he’s moving it before he realizes he’s going to, wrapping his fingers around her wrist, turning it over. Arm so narrow in his grip, delicate girl, but there are no veins where her pulse-point should be, no flesh, just bare metal that will never break or yield. He runs his thumb across it, across soft skin, across the hard mechanical part underneath. Perfect feat of engineering, and she’s warm to the touch, smooth as a steel blade. If he leaves a fingerprint, there, on the clean, polished surface of what she is, will her skin close up around it, seal his touch inside?

He yanks his hand away, suddenly burning with the intimacy of what he’s doing, the familiarity he can’t explain why he wants.

“I’m sorry,” he says, stepping away. “That was…weird. I don’t… Sorry.”

Cameron’s hand shoots out, catching his, holding him back. When he turns his head, they’re eye to eye.

She lifts his hand to her face, presses his palm to her cheek. There are strips of skin missing along her jaw, across her forehead. He feels metal beneath his index finger.

He can‘t make his mind wrap around how beautiful she is. Like this.

“Yes,” she says. “Weird.”

In her level voice, it’s simply a statement of fact.

  


* * *

  


There’s the smell of blood and gunpowder and smoke thick in his nostrils, but they’re safe, they’re alive, it’s okay. Cameron has him, Cameron got them out, and he is jumped up on adrenaline, jittery with the rush of survival.

Between one breath and the next, he’s leaned in to kiss her, cupping her face in his hands, pressing her back against the red brick wall of the building, his body flush against hers.

She parts her lips for him, answers his tongue with hers, but there’s no breath in her mouth, no heaving of her chest. He’s alive, so fucking alive, but she’s…something else.

“You’re not human,” he says, pulling back. Which is a ridiculous thing to say, so he quickly adds, “I mean, I know you’re not human, but I can _feel_ it.” He can’t stop touching her, watching his hands as they slide down her neck, over the thin cotton shoulder straps of her top, the gorgeously crafted collarbones underneath. “How could Barbara not feel it when she kissed Vic?”

Cameron is still holding on to him, gripping his upper arms as if she’s afraid his knees might give out any second and she’ll have to keep him standing, but she doesn’t push him away.

“He was programmed to mimic human physical responses,” she says.

“And you’re not?”

Out in the street, he can hear sirens approaching. They’ll have to get the hell out soon, before they end up having to explain to the cops what’s happened here, but he’s curious, he wants to know this. And he doesn’t want to let go.

“I have the necessary subroutines,” Cameron says, “since I might need them. But not with you.”

He’s half hard against the curve of her hip, growing harder, and if anything, she’s keeping him there, right where he is. He doesn’t get it.

“Why not with me?”

She does that thing where she almost shrugs.

“That’s what you told me.”

“What do you mean? What did I say?”

Cameron tilts her head, and he can see it coming, he wants to tell her _no, please don’t_ , but it’s too late, he’s already asked the question.

When she opens her mouth, it’s his voice that comes out. Rougher, older, layered with years like the rings of a tree, but at the core, unmistakably his.

“Don’t,” he says, in the future, in Cameron’s memory. “Cameron, just… I know what you are. I don’t want the illusion. Just…” There’s a pause, and he has time to imagine what might have filled it, what _will_ fill it. Gestures. Touches. Skin against skin against metal. “I just want you.”

He can’t breathe, can’t think, but when he drops his hands from her shoulders, Cameron lets him pull away. She is still, completely still, watching him with her expressionless eyes. The sirens are almost on top of them now.

“We need to go,” he manages to say, and she nods.

“Yes,” she agrees. “This way.” Her voice is her own again.

As he follows her down the alley, he thinks his heart might be beating fast enough for both of them.

  


* * *

  


John is not asleep, she knows this because she is always monitoring his vital signs, just as she monitors the corridor outside the reinforced door for any approaching threats against him. It is not a surprise when he speaks into the dark room.

“Come lie down for a bit,“ he says. “You’re too awake for me to get any sleep.”

This statement is illogical, and Cameron can already list a number of nights as evidence that it is also false, but John is human and does not always say what he means.

“I don’t sleep,” she says, but she crosses the floor and stretches out on the narrow bed beside him, nevertheless.

He rearranges his pillow, closer to her shoulder. Settles his body around hers.

“I know that, Cameron,” he says. “But you can not-sleep just as well horizontally.”

His voice is very soft, and he is correct.

He is not wearing a shirt, and with her night vision on, she can see the scars that riddle his bare skin. Beneath it, he is not made of coltan, and it puzzles her that he is not yet broken. This, too, is illogical.

“Why do you call me that?” she asks. “Cameron?”

 _Metal shouldn’t have names,_ that is what she heard one of John’s men say to his friends, out in the tunnels. _It isn’t right._ She does not tell John this, though. She knows it would upset him, although she is not sure why.

“You’ve always been Cameron,” he says, as if this is an explanation, and wraps his arm around her. “You were when we first met.”

His hand comes to rest on her chest, above her shirt, palm flat against the spot where no heart is beating.

He is already asleep when she curls her fingers around his, around all those fragile bones, but his breathing remains calm.

She does not sleep that way until morning.


End file.
